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The role of chance, or 'luck', in science comprises all ways in which unexpected discoveries are made. This is a topic studied in many domains, especially psychology. Kevin Dunbar and colleagues estimate that between 30% and 50% of all scientific discoveries are, in some sense, accidental (see examples below).〔 Dunbar quotes Louis Pasteur's saying that "Chance favors only the prepared mind".〔Oersted vit tout à coup (par hasard, direz-vous peut-être, mais souvenez-vous que, dans les champs de l'observation, le hasard ne favorise que les esprits préparés), il vit tout à coup l'aiguille se mouvoir et prendre une position très différente de celle que lui assigne le magnétisme terrestre.〕 He suggests that observational rigor can be harnessed to make more discoveries, and also that various investigations into the scientific method itself (e.g. philosophical, historical, psychological, Thomas Kuhn's famous ''The Structure of Scientific Revolutions'', and so on)〔〔Darden, L. (1997). Strategies for discovering mechanisms: Schema instantiation, modular subassembly, forward chaining/backtracking. Proceedings of the 1997 Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association.〕〔Thagard, P. (1999). How Scientists Explain Disease. Princeton, NJ; Princeton University Press.〕〔Kulkarni, D., & Simon, H. (1988). The processes of scientific discovery: The strategy of experimentation. Cognitive Science, 12, 139–175.〕 have all supported the idea that serendipity ("happy accidents") plays an important part.〔Dunbar, K., & Fugelsang, J. (2005). Causal thinking in science: How scientists and students interpret the unexpected. In M. E. Gorman, R. D. Tweney, D. Gooding & A. Kincannon (Eds.), Scientific and Technical Thinking (pp. 57–79). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.〕 Research suggests that scientists are taught various heuristics and practices that allow their investigations to benefit from serendipity.〔〔Oliver, J.E. (1991) Ch2. of The incomplete guide to the art of discovery. New York:NY, Columbia University Press.〕 Researchers use the scientific method because the careful control conditions allow them to properly identify something as "unexpected", potentially leading them to new knowledge. Researchers also work across various disciplines to explain their curious findings: They use creative analogies, but also seek help from colleagues with different specialities.〔 Psychologist Alan A. Baumeister emphasizes that a scientist must also be "sagacious" (attentive and clever) to turn luck into serendipity.〔 ==Preparing to make discoveries== Accidental discoveries have been a topic of discussion especially from the 20th century onwards. Kevin Dunbar and Jonathan Fugelsang say that somewhere between 33% and 50% of all scientific discoveries are unexpected. This helps explain why scientists often call their discoveries "lucky", and yet scientists themselves may not be able to detail exactly what role luck played (see also introspection illusion). Dunbar and Fugelsang believe it is because the scientists have prepared good experiments, but also have "prepared minds".〔 Professor of economics Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls science "anti-fragile". That is, science can actually use — and benefit from — the chaos of the real world. While some methods of investigation are fragile in the face of human error and randomness, the scientific method benefits from such randomness in many ways. Taleb believes that the more anti-fragile the system, the more it will flourish in the real world.〔Taleb contributes a brief description of anti-fragility,http://www.edge.org/q2011/q11_3.html〕〔〔Taleb, N. N. (2010). The Black Swan: Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable: With a new section: "On Robustness and Fragility". NY: Random House.〕 According to M. K. Stoskopf, it is in this way that serendipity is often the "foundation for important intellectual leaps of understanding" in science. The word "Serendipity" is frequently understood as simply "a happy accident", but Horace Walpole used the word 'serendipity' to refer to a certain kind of happy accident: the kind that can only be exploited by a "sagacious" or clever person.〔〔 (Manuscript written 1958).〕 Dunbar and Fugelsang suggest that the process of discovery often starts when a researcher finds bugs in their experiment. These unexpected results lead a researcher to try and fix what they ''think'' is an error in their methodology; they explain the error using local hypotheses (e.g. analogies typical of the discipline). This process is also local in the sense that the scientist is relatively independent or else working with one partner. Eventually, the researcher decides that the error is too persistent and systematic to be a coincidence. The methods then become more broad: The researcher will begin to think of theoretical explanations for the error, sometimes seeking the help of colleagues across different domains of expertise. The highly controlled, cautious, curious and even social aspects of the scientific method are thus what make it well suited for identifying persistent systematic errors (anomalies).〔〔 Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who discovered LSD's psychedelic properties when he tried ingesting it at his lab, wrote Dunbar and colleagues cite the discoveries of Hofmann and others as having involved serendipity. In contrast, the mind can be "prepared" in ways that obstruct serendipity, such as if the thinker is adhering too strongly to expectations or to dogma. Psychologist Alan A. Baumeister describes at least one such instance: researcher Roy Heath failed to recognized evidence of "pleasure brain circuits" (in the septal nuclei). When Heath stimulated the brains of his schizophrenic patients, some of them reported feeling pleasure and Heath could have inquired further. Heath, however, was "prepared" (based on prior beliefs) for patients to report alertness – and when other patients did, it was on alertness that Heath focussed all his investigations. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「role of chance in scientific discoveries」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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